Search results

  1. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    SLC in general implies higher reliability though, right? That seems to be part of the technology. I'm more than willing to trade off slightly reduced performance if it'll give me "enterprise" reliability at a substantially reduced fraction of the price of high end units.
  2. Mercutio

    24GB+ of RAM?

    I think I'd rather split the workload to a second system for redundancy's sake, rather than building some obscenely beefy (and overpriced) single system, but this Tyan board looks like a pretty good deal. I do not like having all my eggs in one basket though.
  3. Mercutio

    24GB+ of RAM?

    OK. Say it with me: C-L-U-S-T-E-R
  4. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My understanding is that most cars burn a gallon of fuel for every half hour that they idle. Which explains my gas mileage on those trips I make to Westmont.
  5. Mercutio

    Religion Flow Chart

    Other than minor ecclesiastical quibbles about stuff like the nature of free will and the relative value of action vs. ritual vs. listening to some mope with slicked-back hair and a mail order divinity degree , the various branches of your religion seem to pretty much be the same to me.
  6. Mercutio

    Phone thread: What phones are you using, and with what plans?

    Things that are wrong with that: 1. It's on Verizon. That means having Verizon's retarded interface forced on it instead of whatever it's supposed to have, and paying to unlock features that should be included with the phone. 2. Made by Motorola. After seeing dozens of crappy RAZRs and at...
  7. Mercutio

    How reliable is the ipconfig /all information?

    For the size of the offices I'm normally dealing with, port authentication isn't even an available option for the equipment.
  8. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    These look awfully interesting. Especially since I just paid almost twice as much for SLC Vertex models. I wonder what's wrong with them. Anyway, you guys who are complaining about not being able to buy an X25-M, I'm in the same place. I've been trying for two weeks to buy a couple Radeon 58x0...
  9. Mercutio

    How reliable is the ipconfig /all information?

    Yes. I've wanted to strangle people a couple of times over that.
  10. Mercutio

    Cool virtualizing tool

    There's stuff all over the Windows 7 training materials about .VHDs. The Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 installation process uses .VHD in place of .WIM files and the Windows Deployment Service in Server 2008 R2 can deploy .VHDs as readily as .WIM files for supported OSes. That's only a big deal if...
  11. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    Maybe try running the backup at a priority above idle?
  12. Mercutio

    How reliable is the ipconfig /all information?

    If you're dealing with non-routable IPs, it's entirely possible that the machine that reports itself as 192.168.1.1 isn't the machine you think it is. I've had to deal with weirdness of like employees bringing in their own Wireless routers. That can cause all kinds of weirdness.
  13. Mercutio

    Small build

    I buy Antec cases from Provantage or Amazon sometimes. Amazon gives me 2-day shipping on everything, so I watch it for sales on Antec cases.
  14. Mercutio

    Phone thread: What phones are you using, and with what plans?

    Blackberry is god-awful. Wouldn't touch one. Palm has the wrong idea of what phones should be like. I don't want a tiny screen and a bunch of hard buttons in the way of my mobile web experience. Android hardware (and network access) to date has been highly lacking. It's going to get the same...
  15. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Live Mesh seems really interesting. Especially from the standpoint of enabling remote desktop on "home" Windows systems.
  16. Mercutio

    Phone thread: What phones are you using, and with what plans?

    WMwifirouter. Windows Mobile has had this one covered for a while. I really want my HTC HD2 now. Even if it does have a retarded non-stylus touchscreen.
  17. Mercutio

    Small build

    I generally find ITX too limiting, but Antec's ISK300 looks like a pretty nice enclosure overall. Since LM wants an optical and two hard disks, I might suggest an Antec Minuet with an Intel G43 motherboard. The case is small but well built, and the motherboard is one of those sensible Intel...
  18. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    I went ahead and bought TrueImage 2010. It seems to be a lot faster for backup and restores, though the interface is not quite as friendly as it used to be to new users. I don't know why they blocked it on the release version. I have it on my Thinkpad, which is still on the Release Candidate...
  19. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    Weird. Maybe I'll make my students test a couple more install scenarios.
  20. Mercutio

    Drives Not Recognised By BIOS

    SATA by itself does not impose drive geometry limitations, to the best of my ability to research.
  21. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    Apparently not everyone has access to that version. I know a number of small and medium businesses that can't use whatever the hell client they were provided with in Vista with their PIXes.
  22. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    If you have Cisco's VPN client, it still won't work on Windows 7. Anyway, yeah, you can start your upgrade install from either Vista or XP and just choose to do a "custom" install and select the proper partition to put Win7 in. It's pretty painless.
  23. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    GMA3100 has never enabled Aero Glass in my experience. You get a limited sub-set of Aero called Aero Basic instead, which I suspect uses a software renderer. My notebooks and my standard desktop builds (G31/G41-based) just get Basic in Vista/7.
  24. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    Upgrade.
  25. Mercutio

    Drives Not Recognised By BIOS

    That's not normal behavior for any drive.
  26. Mercutio

    My HTPC died! New Build Time!

    ... or my personal Asus favorite, a BIOS-mandated and uncustomizable shutdown when the system temp hits 50C. Which is really easy to get if you have a decent video card.
  27. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    Mine have been in the 20 minute ballpark, yeah.
  28. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    The upgrade hole lives. I was able to install an unregistered custom install on a blank hard disk from Home Premium Upgrade media, and then use that installation as the basis for an install that I did finish and register.
  29. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    OK, it's just islightly weirder than that. Everything "old" goes under Windows.old. The original Documents and Settings, Program Files and Windows folders are all there with no harm done. Very simple and straightforward, and the install took about 26 minutes on a 9 month old 2GB E5300 with a...
  30. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    OK, just like I suspected, it's just like what happens when you install XP on a system with 2000, or XP on a system infected with Vista - when you start the install, the default is to do Upgrade, which doesn't work on XP. You have to restart and do an Custom install. Your existing Windows...
  31. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    Well, the upgrade disc won't let you upgrade 32bit to 64-bit in any combination. I'm about to try one of those "well used" Volume Licenses to go to Home Premium. I'm just going to take defaults all the way through and I'll see what I end up with.
  32. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    I'll let you all know how well upgrades from XP with a VLK work sometime this weekend, after I get done testing it. I have upgrade discs for Home Premium and Professional and I'll be testing those. My preliminary reading says that the upgrades just want an activated copy of XP or Vista and...
  33. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    I got a set from Buy.com and two from Sam's Club. Buy.com has been sold out of Family Packs since like August.
  34. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    Being able to join a domain is pretty important if you have a domain. I managed to get a total of three Family Packs of upgrade licenses @ $45 per license. I'm sure I'll do something useful with those. My customer is an idiot and did not understand that "clean install" means clean install. I...
  35. Mercutio

    Windows 7 nonsense

    October 22, 9:39AM: I get my first support call from someone trying to upgrade XP to Windows 7.
  36. Mercutio

    My HTPC died! New Build Time!

    I'd say there's about a 99% chance it's the board, and would simply RMA the board. If they told me it wasn't broken, you're just out the $10 it cost to ship. I've seen a CPU die without a thermal event exactly once, ever.
  37. Mercutio

    My HTPC died! New Build Time!

    Yes, if only because someone would probably be very happy to have an AMDx2/4200. The women's shelter where I take old equipment is grateful for anything newer than a Pentium 2.
  38. Mercutio

    Virtualization project

    Last I talked to Jess, she's doing her level best to get permission to implement VMware in some form.
  39. Mercutio

    PCI-X SATA 2.0 Raid controller?

    Greg, if you have a PCI-X slot, you can probably find any number of PCI-X SAS controllers on Ebay for under $100.
  40. Mercutio

    My HTPC died! New Build Time!

    Last I heard it's not possible to play commercially produced BD titles on a Mac; there's no playback software.
  41. Mercutio

    My HTPC died! New Build Time!

    OK, if it does, at least you can properly shut the damned thing off if you don't want it, unlike on ATI cards.
  42. Mercutio

    My HTPC died! New Build Time!

    I don't think it does; the nVidia IGP behaves a lot better with my Auzentech cards, whereas the ATI hardware that does support audio over HDMI does act horribly with my chosen sound hardware. I use an MSI nVidia-based Intel board for my HTPC builds.
  43. Mercutio

    Phone thread: What phones are you using, and with what plans?

    Most of the burner cell phone plans have minutes that expire on some schedule, but they work if you don't need to use a phone that much.
  44. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    3x OCZ Vertex in ICH10 RAID0 = 7.7 on Windows 7's ratings. What. The. Fuck?
  45. Mercutio

    Building a home NAS - feedback on build

    This 100% wrong for IDE drives. The back is a 44 pin interface and the pins are closer together. You need that adapter.
  46. Mercutio

    1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 RAID-1 Perc 5/i Quirkiness

    Differing firmware optimizations?
  47. Mercutio

    Building a home NAS - feedback on build

    I've found Intel G41 boards that still had Parallel port options in the BIOS despite the faxt that they did not have parallel ports. I've also dealt with Vostro desktops that lacked SATA boot order options. Go figure.
  48. Mercutio

    8 x 1.5TB + Perc 6i + RAID-6 = Faster Storage

    OK, well that answers that. Maybe you should try running off your Gigabyte X48 board's onboard ports next?
  49. Mercutio

    Building a home NAS - feedback on build

    Date, time, installed memory, parallel port modes... what more could you ask for?
  50. Mercutio

    8 x 1.5TB + Perc 6i + RAID-6 = Faster Storage

    You did get somewhat better performance with the softRAID. Kinda. :) With 10 drives, I kind of wonder if you've exceeded the capacity of your card's CPU. Maybe if you switch down to 4, 6, 8 drives, you'll find different results.
Top